Dear PM Modi, if challenging status-quo is sedition, I too am guilty!

Dear PM Modi, It is treasonous to not pay attention to the needs of poverty-stricken children while pretending to be patriots jailing university students for 'ant national' slogans.

Written by Ujjal Dosanjh | Published:March 15, 2016 9:29 am

To my mind, what is most anti-national is to not see, acknowledge and eradicate this grinding poverty of India. Reuters

I am feeling “seditious”. I am. I am in India, my motherland, the land of my ancestors. I can literally feel the centuries of Indianness coursing through my veins. Though the arms I think of are of the peaceful variety yet it is impossible to escape the call of my conscience to arms.

From India I have been following the events surrounding the JNU and the allegations of ‘sedition’ and ‘anti-national’ being thrown about so recklessly. There can’t be any real danger to the world’s largest, well grounded and enduring democracy from some students shouting what may or may not have been irresponsible slogans. India is not some airy fairy place that is going to be torn asunder just because some students talk about whether Afzal Guru’s hanging was legally proper and just.

No one has the right to dictate what thoughts one can think or articulate even if they may be questionable in their very essence or how they are crafted including those that may cast doubt on the legal propriety of Afzal Guru’s hanging by India.
I have no time for any one picking up a gun to kill or attempt to kill any one let alone the parliamentarians of Indian democracy that Afzal Guru’s alleged associates did. And I have no time for those who glorify others such as Nathuram Godse who, in liberated India, killed the undisputed leader of the freedom movement.

One could call those who glorify Guru or Godse or others like them misguided, gone astray or completely wrong. But in a true democracy they have a right to be misguided, wrong or to be led astray. To call them seditious is to cheapen true patriotism and think India weak and believe that it will readily crumble under the weight of sloganeering by students at universities.

I would urge the self styled definers of “patriotism” and “nationalism” in India to stop constraining individual freedoms and start worrying about students at its universities turning into book worms who never read a newspaper, shout a slogan or attend a demonstration to change the country. If all the students become solely preoccupied by the marks they get at universities and how big their pay packets might be, in the end India will be a much lesser country and certainly not the country of the dreams of its freedom fighters.

A degree of sedition and subversion, in other words an undermining and challenging of the status quo, is inherent in any movement for change. In that sense, RSS is subversive as it wants to change the nature of Indian state and so are all the political parties worth their name who have differing visions of India. If they intend no subversion of the extant reality — the status quo — then they have no business in politics unless they are in the business of massaging their own egos or plundering the country.

As I write this column on the train from Delhi to Phagwara, I occasionally lift my sights away from the keyboard of my computer and see acres and acres of wheat and other green crops in the vastness of Haryana and Punjab. I also see the poverty in the shanties and jhuggies lining both sides of the railway tracks. The surroundings of these dwellings, if one could at all call them dwellings, are littered with runaway plastic and other garbage. There are small ponds, puddles and sewers of waste, mainly dirty water mixed and polluted with all manner of waste both human and animal. This is where a significant part of the future of India lives — in those shanties, in the midst of that plastic, human and animal waste and the sewers of stench. This is where the children of the shanties play and grow up. None of it seems at all touched by the Swachch Bharat or any other grand schemes or plans of state or central governments past or present.

To my mind, what is most anti-national is to not see, acknowledge and eradicate this grinding poverty of India.

This is the kind of extreme poverty that is everywhere in India. It lives alongside and in sight of the extreme wealth. Those half naked children playing in front of and around the shanties are what the government should worry about instead of the students at universities shouting slogans mildly subversive of the status quo. Those children, dressed in rags, play and live — no, I must say exist — right next to cows and other animals chewing gobs of plastic as they graze on the patches of dying grass littered with the ubiquitous garbage all over India. One day they are going to — and they must if India is to have any hope of change — grow up and join the university students such as Kanhaiya and Khalid to subvert the status quo that has kept them and their parents in such extreme poverty.

Prime Minister Modi, here is the naked truth:

It is treasonous to not pay attention to the needs of these children while pretending to be patriots jailing university students for ‘ant national’ slogans;

It is not seditious to shout anti government slogans;

The BJP government is not India. For that matter no government ever is or has been India despite Indira Gandhi and her sycophants once believing so and imposing the hated Emergency in what they claimed was national interest;
It is sedition pure and simple, Prime Minister Modi, for the governments of post independence India to have allowed poverty to remain at alarming levels, to allow corruption and communalism to grow and to enable all three to have a deadly strangle hold over the country.

And, Prime Minster Modi, I have harboured and expressed these thoughts all my life. Being forthright and honest is sedition too in the eyes of the defenders of the status quo. I do not believe one whit in the status quo in India on caste, communalism, poverty and corruption. Therefore I must plead guilty to being seditious and subversive.

On behalf of those children I saw playing outside their shanties on both sides of the railway tracks and hundreds of millions of other poor Indian children I CHARGE ALL GOVERNMENTS OF INDIA SINCE 1947 WITH SEDITION FOR BETRAYING THEM–A CRIME far more serious than some angry slogans of a few angry students.

And yes! For levelling the charge of SEDITION so publicly against all Indian governments to-date I may be, according to the newer and twisted definition of sedition, GUILTY of SEDITION /SUBVERSION — take your pick.

Views expressed by the author are personal.

Source: indianexpress

Inter-caste marriages on the rise despite odds

COIMBATORE, March 16, 2016

M.K. Ananth

'The number of inter-caste marriages has gone up over the last two decades with more girls getting educated and getting better exposure.'

Not long after the reported ‘honour killing’ in Udumalpet, a couple approached the Thanthai Periyar Dravida Kazhagam (TPDK) in Coimbatore on Monday asking for help to have an inter-caste wedding.

The Kazhagam, authorised to enable registration of inter-caste marriages, has organised more than 3,000 inter-caste marriages since 2000. “We performed 50 marriages a year initially. It is steadily increasing every year. Last year, we performed 385 such marriages,” state general secretary of the organisation, Ku. Ramakrishnan, said.

He said that the number of inter-caste marriages had actually gone up over the last two decades with more girls getting educated and getting better exposure. Around 15 per cent of the couples were students.

“Fifteen per cent are from the IT sector, of them one or both are from other districts or nearby States,” he said. Twenty per cent are inter-faith marriages.

A third of the marriages involved one of them from the southern and central districts, who were getting married here due to fear of attack by the Caste Hindus.

‘Parents rarely attend inter-caste marriages’

Parents of either the groom or bride attended the marriage in only 10 per cent of the cases and in only two per cent of the cases did both the father and mother attend. “Though they were not against the marriage they preferred keeping it a low-key affair, over fear of being sidelined by their community,” he added.

President of Social Justice Movement N. Paneerselvam who has organised 150 inter-caste marriages from January 2015 said that there were very few marriages that take place without a problem. “We have even been threatened by the Caste Hindu families on many occasions,” he said.

“After performing such marriages we take the couple to the police station,” he said. He said that doing so gives a strong message to the families of the bride and groom as the police warn the families not to harm or disturb the young couple. “Down the line some of the families accept the couple setting aside casteist sentiments,” he added.

Source: thehindu

The Dalit who lost his limbs for protesting against his daughter’s gang-rape

Dalit atrocities

A new book chronicles the amazing story of Bant Singh’s courage, resistance and willpower.

Nirupama Dutt  · Today · 08:30 am

On January 5, 2006, Bant Singh, a Dalit agrarian labourer and activist in Punjab’s Jhabar village, was ambushed and brutally beaten by upper-caste Jat men armed with iron rods and axes. He lost both his arms and a leg in the attack. It was punishment for having fought for justice for his minor daughter who had been gang-raped.

What does the laal salaam mean to Bant? He smiles. “The red salute links me to every worker in the country. In this greeting, red is for the blood that flows through the veins of a labourer; the blood that a worker is not afraid to shed in struggle. You know the red of the Communist flag means the same. The flag was first white, but the blood of the workers dyed it red.”

After this simply and surely put reply, Bant moves on to discuss the activities of the Mazdoor Mukti Morcha of the All India Agricultural Labour Association (AIALA), associated with the CPI Marxist-Leninist (CPI M-L) Liberation Party. This overground party evolved from a faction of the ML and it now participates in the democratic process of the country with representation in state assemblies.

Word gets around that Bant has visitors from Mansa; some elders from the neighbourhood come calling and settle down on charpais in the courtyard.

As the discussion warms up, a tall, slim and attractive girl brings steaming hot tea. A little boy is trailing her. Natt, patting the child on his head, tells me, “This is Baljit, Bant Singh’s eldest daughter.” I am silent for a moment, then force a smile on to my lips as I look at this young mother who is barely out of girlhood.

Her testimony echoes in my ears: “I, Baljit Kaur, daughter of Shri Bant Singh, am a resident of Burj Jhabbar in Mansa district, Punjab. I was gang-raped on July 6, 2002. I did not conceal the incident and along with my father waged a struggle for justice...” I wonder if I will ever be able to talk to her about her travails. The idea that she would have to relive her pain all over again is horrendous to me.

I was to realise later that my hesitation arose from the comfort of my own relatively privileged existence. Those who are pushed to the wall find the courage to tell their tale of woe over and again.

Bant Singh’s was that rare case in which a Dalit had defied the sarpanch of a village to seek justice in a court and had succeded in having the culprits sentenced to life imprisonment. And, for this, he and his family had to pay a very heavy price. This was because a Dalit had actually succeeded in getting an upper-caste Jat man and two others convicted of rape.

What, after all, does a Dalit labourer have? He has neither money nor influence. All he has is his own body, which he must use to earn a livelihood. And, as for the body of the Dalit woman, it is very easy for it to be seen as an object of casual, easy abuse. In Bant’s case, and in Baljit’s, it was their bodies which became the sites of oppression.

There was this very crude joke that a Jat boyfriend told me many years ago when we were classmates at the School of Journalism in Panjab University. “In the village we laugh that if you make out with an ‘untouchable’ girl [the word Dalit was not in vogue at that time in our part of the country] you get defiled and then you have to make out with a Brahmin girl for purification’s sake!” At nineteen I just dismissed it as a rustic off-colour joke without realising that I was probably being considered a potential agent of purification.

Seeking justice

Bant lost three limbs on 8 January and, as he was moved into intensive care, his comrades, after recovering from the grave shock, got busy in organising the struggle for justice. One of the first steps was to appeal to the police authorities for sterner action against the culprits, with recommendations from the doctors at PGI that Bant’s life was still in danger. The next was to hold a Press Conference in the basement of Punjab Book Centre in Chandigarh’s Sector 22 on 11 January.

The Times of India carried a story in which correspondent Ramaninder Kaur brought out the grave injustice in no uncertain terms: “In a country where law-breakers excel in subverting the system, how much is a landless farm worker expected to pay for getting justice for his minor rape-victim daughter? To be precise, two arms and a leg.”

Other papers followed and the blackout which the Mansa reporters had imposed gradually lifted. This brought a sad reflection from Comrade Jeeta: “After the attack, we contacted the media but even the local papers did not report the beating up of a Dalit. It was only when his limbs were amputated that journalists seemed to find the incident newsworthy.”

Tragic indeed are the yardsticks of news-making, but the reports on Bant soon flared into outrage and the collective conscience was roused from apathy because it was not just one man’s tale – Bant emerged as a symbol of Dalit resistance in Punjab.

The people’s support

A rally of agricultural workers demanding justice and compensation for Bant was called at his village on 16 January, 2006, while he was still in intensive care at the PGI. But the terror unleashed by the brutal attack took its toll on the attendance and only some five hundred activists from different outfits trickled in.

However, the tide had turned within nine days. The rally on 25 January had a phenomenal attendance with over ten thousand agricultural labourers and activists. Recalling the mammoth gathering, Kanwaljit recalls that the most emotive moment came when Baljit got up, holding her three-month-old baby in her arms and spoke out in angst.

He said, “Comrade Swapan Mukherjee, who had come from Delhi, saw Baljit and asked her to speak. Without any hesitation she got up and said what had happened to her and now what had been done to her father. ‘How long will we suffer such injustice,’ she cried out and tears sprang to many eyes. It was an act of great courage because a girl in Punjab never speaks of any sexual exploitation, but here was someone breaking a taboo and calling out for justice.”

Bant had supporters in Punjab and elsewhere. The Forum for Democratic Initiatives sent a team to Punjab to enquire into the details of the incident and launched a nation-wide campaign which laid bare the ugly face of prosperous Punjab.

Above all, it was Bant’s spirit which made the movement. On the eighteenth day after his amputation, while his condition was still serious, he surprised doctors and his fellow patients alike by singing some of Udasi’s songs from his sick-bed. “That was the moment,” said Kanwaljit, “when I decided: no more robot-making; it was time to quit my job and become a whole-timer with the Party because here I was now in the company of crusaders, the real men and women.”

He has since organised agrarian labour in the Sangrur district and has not regretted the decision even for a moment. Bant and he share a special bond, because during the three months that Bant was in PGI they were constant companions. Kanwaljit says that Bant endeared himself to everyone in the hospital with his wit, humour and courage.

The song of the oppressed

The sad and violent secrets of human existence linger in the picturesque countryside. “How can such ugliness co-exist with the innocent beauty of the ruralscape?” I wonder, as I collect bits and pieces about Bant’s life, as well as the lives of many like him. “I hope Bant is safe in the open like this?” I ask and Natt laughs at the naiveté of my question. “What more can they do to him? Kill him? But they will not, for they have perhaps realised that it may not be so easy to play with the lives of the oppressed. The oppressed will rise and question injustice.”

My first visit to Bant was at an end but I was left wondering how I would play Boswell to him. This was a new territory that I was entering, one paved with misery, but one which Bant and his people gradually eased my way into it. The untravelled path has its lows and one sometimes stumbles or sinks into deep depression but, most of the time, one is elated by the courage and resilience that comes to the fore.

This, then, is the ballad of Bant Singh.

Excerpted with permission from The Ballad of Bant Singh: A Qissa of Courage, Nirupama Dutt, Speaking Tiger Books.

We welcome your comments at letters@scroll.in

Source: scrollin

IITians didn’t exactly do what Nehru wanted, but Raghuram Rajan thinks it was for the best

Food for thought

 

 Reserve Bank of India governor Raghuram Rajan has a message for the government: Encouraging something is the “surest way of killing it.”

In a speech on March 12, the central banker said that the state should simply focus on enabling business activities in the country, instead of trying to control their end results. Once an ideal environment has been created, “then let our myriad entrepreneurs figure out what new and interesting businesses they will create,” he added.

To illustrate his point, Rajan talked about the Indian government’s unwitting role in the creation of the country’s booming software industry.

The Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) were set up by India’s first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru. In those days, the objective of these institutes was “to provide scientists and technologists of the highest calibre who would engage in research, design and development to help building the nation towards self-reliance in her technological needs,” according to Nehru.

But, instead of living up to these lofty aims, IITs, in the 1990s, “supplied managers and programmers to body shops focused on dealing with the Y2K bug,” said Rajan at the Ramnath Goenka Memorial lecture in Delhi.

These “body shops” later “evolved into our world-beating software giants,” he added. Rajan, an IIT Delhi alumnus himself, was seemingly referring to companies such as Infosys and Tata Consultancy Services, among others, which have become stars in the global IT services sector.

Here is an unedited excerpt from his speech:

    I am often asked, “What industries should we focus on, what should we encourage?” Learning from our past, I would say let us not encourage anything; that might be the surest way of killing it. Instead, let us make sure we create a good business environment that can support any kind of activity, and then let our myriad entrepreneurs figure out what new and interesting businesses they will create. In the 1990s, the IITs that Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru created to supply engineers to the commanding public sector heights of the economy instead supplied managers and programmers to body shops focused on dealing with the Y2K bug. These in turn evolved into our world-beating software giants. While the government did not create the software industry, it was not inconsequential by any means to its emergence and development.

    Similarly, let us enable business activity but not try and impose too much design on it.

Source: qz

Decode this: Delhi HC must explain Kanhaiya bail order

It seems to me that his surety, as indeed Kanhaiya himself, must wear a hypothetical intellectual dog collar of the mind.

Written by Rajeev Dhavan | Updated: March 14, 2016 9:04 am

Kanhaiya Kumar at JNU. (Express Photo: Praveen Khanna)

Kanhaiya Kumar’s bail order is stunning. A patriotic judge’s patriotic lament. Lyricist Indeevar opens the first page of Justice Pratibha Rani’s judgment on Kanhaiya’s bail order. Imagine a chorus in court praising Hari Singh Nalwa, Lal Bahadur (Congress), Bhagat Singh (martyr), Jawahar (Congress), and the great nation swallowing up gold, diamonds and pearls. Imagine, too, shouts of encore to repeat — as the song’s tune reverberates in your mind.

What you don’t hear is Justice Krishna Iyer’s judicially consecrated slogan “Bail not jail”. Imagine the slogan “Bail not jail” being chanted, with encores galore.

If permissible, would the latter have been more appropriate? The case for bail should have been simple, based on the principles of prima facie case, seriousness of crime, prevention of the accused from absconding, non-tampering of evidence, and the requirement of cooperation with the investigation. Perhaps something could have been said about the failure of the police to protect Kanhaiya, and the intimidation of sloganeering goonda lawyers who beat him up, attacked journalists, and did not even spare a committee sent by the Supreme Court.

Bail granted, conditions imposed. Protection not ordered despite threats.

Kapil Sibal’s argument denied any slogan-raising by Kanhaiya. Additional Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, appearing for the “state”, (which state? Perhaps the State of the Nation), elaborated on the entire JNU incident, including on the posters, slogans and photographs to establish atmosphere. He even said Kanhaiya’s speech on February 11 “was part of his strategy to create a defence”. A view echoed by Justice Rani even though it was something that could not be examined at that stage.

On prima facie case, it remains a mystery as to why the learned judge cited the Gujarat High Court’s decision in Hardik Patel (2016) rather than the Supreme Court’s celebrated judgment in Kedar Nath (1962). The reference to Justice Rohinton Nariman’s view in Shreya Singhal (2015) on the “level of incitement” when restriction on free speech “kicks in” should have been a reminder for caution.

And so, was there a prima facie case? We will not exactly know because the next paragraph in the Kanhaiya bail case refers to the “vision and object of Jawaharlal Nehru University”, quoting lavishly from its website. This was to suggest that Kanhaiya betrayed his alma mater and, as emphasised later, “Our forces… protecting our frontiers in the most difficult terrain in the world, that is, Siachen Glacier or Rann of Kutch”.

The judge’s geography may be confused. The point made by the judge was that JNU protesters, too, must introspect on their slogans and displaying of photos of Afzal Guru and Maqbool Bhatt.

Indeed, the judge prescribes that JNU must take remedial steps to investigate and avoid recurrence. The general prescription suggested by the judge is “Whenever some infection is spread in a limb… [give] antibiotics orally and if that does not work… it may require surgical intervention also. [and] if the infection results in… gangrene, amputation is the only treatment”.

To whom is this advice given? To JNU? Or the state to use antibiotics and amputation to avoid the spread of this gangrene? Where? In JNU or in India — perhaps every nook and cranny of the great nation? This is in addition to her plea for introspection by all, especially the “faculty of JNU… to play its role in guiding them to the right path” for India and the university.

I guess in one sense, JNU and its staff were also on trial for failing in their national duty, as indeed Kanhaiya as president of the students’ union.

The actual discussion on bail is sparse as the learned judge found herself “standing on a cross road”, posing the question: “in view of the nature of serious allegations against him, the anti-national attitude [emphasis added] which can be gathered from the material relied upon by the state should be a ground to keep him in jail”.

Coming back to the law, the learned judge is right in saying that it was for the “investigating agency to unearth the truth” and that his later speech “cannot be examined by this court at this stage”. Then why this judicial exhortation to cure the infection which such students are suffering?

The criminal case against Kanhaiya is yet to be examined. But clearly he was morally culpable as an erring JNU student, as the president of its students’ union and as one possibly infected and who needs antibiotics and, who knows, amputation.

Not literally of course. His bail takes into account the monetary aspect that his mother is an anganwadi worker who earns Rs 3,000, and prescribes a bail bond of Rs 10,000 and a surety preferably from the teaching faculty of JNU. But morally, Kanhaiya is pronounced as being on the wrong side.

One of the considerations for his bail was that during his judicial custody, “he might have introspected about the events that had taken place… [to] enable him to remain in the mainstream”. Kanhaiya is told that as a condition for bail, he will not participate “actively or passively in any activity which may be termed as anti-national”, and as president of the JNU students’ union, he was to “make all efforts within his power to control anti-national activities in the campus”. His surety must also “exercise control… to ensure that his thoughts and energy are channelised in a constructive manner”.

It seems to me that his surety, as indeed Kanhaiya himself, must wear a hypothetical intellectual dog collar of the mind.

Justice Pratibha Rani has more to explain than Kanhaiya.

The writer is a senior advocate at the Supreme Court

Source: indianexpress

An attack that foretold JNU row

National

NEW DELHI, March 14, 2016    Updated: March 14, 2016 00:17 IST

Kritika Sharma Sebastian

Two months before the JJU waded into a full blown political storm, the student wing of the RSS, the Akhil Bharatiya Vidhyarti Parishad (ABVP) had allegedly attempted to mobilise its cadres on the issue of “religious intolerance”.

In a string of social media updates, ABVP leader Saurabh Sharma, who is also at the forefront of the current crisis, had accused the ‘JNU culture’ of hampering religious freedoms and named a hostel warden for disrupting a religious ceremony and for indulging in caste abuse. The warden was also accused of misbehaving with a student.

However, on the day that student leader Kanhaiya Kumar was released from Tihar jail, a local court debunked the ABVP’s complaint, citing in its interim order on anticipatory bail to the warden, that “the ingredients for the offence under section 3 (1) of the SC/ST Act are not satisfied”.

A fact-finding committee of the university also maintained that the warden “did not resort to any caste abuse since none of the complainants were able to spell out the exact words”.

According to documents with The Hindu, in November last year, a student had organised a havan (religious ceremony) inside his room in Jhelum hostel. Since the process involved lighting a fire, which is against the rules of the hostel, students from adjacent rooms called up the hostel wardens. Three wardens of Jhelum hostel, including Professor Himanshu, Professor Ashutosh Kumar and Professor Burton Cleetus intervened in the matter and the havan was stopped.

A day after the incident, the President of the JNU’s ABVP, Saurabh Sharma on his social media account posted: “#Religious intolerance yesterday 1 of our hostel warden Burton Cleetus showed his religious intolerance by disturbing pooja”.

On the same day, Dr. Cleetus was informed that a case had been filed against him for sexual harassment and hurting religious sentiments. The FIR mentioned that: “Mr. Burton stormed inside the room and began to kick all the prayer items including the pictures of the gods. He also used derogatory and abusive words to refer to Hindu gods and forcefully began to kick everyone out of the room.” However, the court in a relief to Dr. Cleetus, has said: “In the absence of complaint stating that Burton Cleetus was aware about the case of Chaitanya, the ingredients for the offence under section 3 (1) of the SC/ST Act are not satisfied and rendering this application under section 438 of the Cr. PC to be maintainable”.

Source: thehindu

శ్రీ కౌముది మార్చి 2016

Source: శ్రీ కౌముది మార్చి 2016

Show Me The Money

In spite of attempts to dress it as one, Aadhaar bill is not a money bill.

Written by P D T Achary | Published:March 12, 2016 12:01 am

In all democratic parliaments, as in India, the Lower House alone has the power to grant money to the executive. A bill that deals with such matters is called a money bill.

The issue of bills being categorised as money bills in an attempt to circumvent the Rajya Sabha has once again become live. On Friday, the Lok Sabha passed the Aadhaar (Targeted Delivery of Financial and Other Subsidies, Benefits and Services) Bill, 2016, which Finance Minister Arun Jaitley asserted was a money bill. But is it actually a money bill?

In all democratic parliaments, as in India, the Lower House alone has the power to grant money to the executive. A bill that deals with such matters is called a money bill. A money bill cannot be passed or rejected by the Rajya Sabha, which can keep such a bill for only 14 days, after which it will be deemed to have been passed by both Houses.

As per Article 110(1), a bill that contains only provisions dealing with the following qualifies as a money bill: One, the imposition, abolition, remission, alteration or regulation of any tax; two, regulation of borrowing or the giving of any guarantee by the government of India, or undertaking financial obligation by the government; three, the custody of the Consolidated Fund of India (CFI) or the Contingency Fund of India, the payment of moneys into or withdrawal from them; four, the appropriation of moneys out of the CFI; five, declaring any expenditure as a charged expenditure on the CFI; six, the receipt of money on account of the CFI or the public account of India or the ambit of accounts of the Union or of a state; seven, any matter incidental to the above issues.

Let’s examine the Aadhaar bill in the light of the above definition. The bill does not deal with imposition, abolition, alteration, etc, of tax; nor does it deal with the regulation of borrowing or giving a guarantee by the government or an amendment in respect of any financial obligation to be undertaken by the government. This bill also does not deal with the custody of the CFI, etc. The moneys paid into or withdrawn from such funds are incidental. The bill is not an appropriation bill that appropriates money from the CFI. It does not deal with declaring any expenditure as a charge on that fund. Further, it does not deal with the receipt of money on account of the CFI or the public account, or the custody or issue of such money, or the audit of the accounts of the Union or states. It may also be noted that a bill becomes a money bill when it contains only provisions dealing with any of the above matters. If a bill contains any other matters, it is not a money bill.

The object of the Aadhaar bill is to create a right to obtain a unique identity number, regulate the enrolment process to collect demographic and biometric information, and create a statutory authority for regulating and supervising the process. It also specifies offences and penalties. The obvious purpose of the bill is to deal with all aspects relating to the unique identity number of Indian residents, which will be used for multiple purposes. Clause 4(3) states that the Aadhaar number may be accepted as proof for “any purpose”, not merely for the payment of subsidy or other monetary benefits.

The above analysis clearly shows that the Aadhaar bill is not a money bill. Subtle attempts have been made to give it the appearance of a money bill by referring to the CFI in certain clauses. But this does not alter the character of the bill, which does not deal with the CFI. Further, subsidies, subventions, etc, are not a part of this bill. If the government had introduced a bill exclusively dealing with these, it would have been a money bill. But the Aadhaar bill does not make any provision for subsidies or other government benefits or specify beneficiaries.

The Aadhaar bill comes under the category of financial bills under Article 117, which would inter alia involve expenditure from the CFI. The Constitution stipulates that such bills be considered only after the president has recommended their consideration. However, such bills can be introduced in either House and, as per Article 107(2), need to be passed by both Houses.

Article 110(3) confirms finality on the speaker’s decision on the question of whether a bill is a money bill. But this constitutional provision cannot be seen as a convenient tool to deal with an inconvenient second chamber. The Constitution reposes faith in the speaker’s fairness and objectivity. Article 110(1) provides the touchstone of the decision to be taken by the speaker under Article 110(3). Any decision actuated by extraneous considerations can’t be a proper decision under Article 110(3). The speaker’s decision needs to be in conformity with the constitutional provisions. If not, it is no decision under the Constitution.

The writer is a former secretary general of the Lok Sabha

Source: indianexpress

Contentious Aadhaar Bill passed with only 73 of 545 members present in Lok Sabha

Aadhaar Card

Contentious Aadhaar Bill passed with only 73 of 545 members present in Lok Sabha
Ruling party overrules privacy concerns and adopts an unusual strategy to pass the legislation.

Scroll Staff, Anumeha Yadav  · Today · 08:49 pm

Only 73 of the Lok Sabha's 545 members were present as the lower house passed the controversial Aadhaar (Target Delivery of Financial and Other Subsidies, Benefits and Services) Bill on Friday.

With the passage of the bill, the government or any "requesting entity", including a private company, could ask an individual to produce the biometrics-ID Aadhaar card to avail any subsidy, benefit, or service. But critics have expressed concerns over citizens' biometric data ‒ such as fingerprints and iris scans ‒ being collected on a mass scale in the absence of a privacy law.

The listing of the Bill on Friday was unusual because, ordinarily, private members' business (bills and resolutions) are taken up before the weekend. The House was relatively empty because several members had already left for their constituencies.

The process was also noteworthy because this was moved as a money Bill, which does not have to be approved by the Rajya Sabha. This was necessary because the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance lacks a majority in the upper house.

As critics pointed out, money Bills relate broadly to taxes or spending from the Treasury. But the government argued that the Aadhaar Bill qualified as one because it deals with expenditure incurred from the government Treasury. Legal experts pointed out that by this token, most Bills on health, education, railways, transport, agriculture could qualify as money Bills. This strategy, they said, would reduce the Rajya Sabha simply to a rubber stamp on any legislation.

Some clarifications

On Friday, the Bill was discussed only three hours.

As the BJP moved the legislation, several members, including those from the Congress, the Biju Janata Dal, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, objected to the decision to classify this as a money Bill and suggested that it be sent to a standing committee.

Finance Minister Arun Jaitley clarified some clauses of the Bill. He claimed that biometric data would not be shared under any circumstances. But the Bill actually allows for this data to shared with a joint secretary of the government in the interests of "national security".

BJD MP Tathagath Satpathy had moved several amendments, including on clause 33(1) which permits disclosure of an individual's data on an order by a district judge. Trinamool Congress MP Saugata Roy had also moved amendments but was not present in the parliament. However, ruling party MPs opposed all amendments by voice vote.

Leader of the Congress in the Lok Sabha Mallikarjun Kharge had earlier stated that the Congress would cooperate with the government on Aadhaar, but objected to the Bill being introduced as a money Bill.

We welcome your comments at letters@scroll.in

Source: scrollin

How the Sangh Parivar transformed Bharat Mata into a militant goddess

Hindutva politics

The cult has been used to whip up support for a Hindu rashtra and consolidate Hindu votes.

Mrinal Pande  · Mar 07, 2016 · 05:30 pm

 In 1950, when India became a Republic, I was four and my mother was 25. I grew up hearing how my mother – like most girls from upper caste, middle class families – would have been schooled at home and married off in her early teens, but for an unusually liberal father who packed off my mother and her siblings to Rabindranath Tagore’s Shantiniketan. She emerged a graduate after 12 years there and later became a Hindi writer of repute. We were also reminded frequently that were it not for subsidised university education and Western science, my father, a humble village postmaster’s son, would never have acquired a first-class Master’s degree in Chemistry . My parents told my sisters and I repeatedly that our right to a wholesome education and a well-paid job afterwards was absolute. But they never let on that within most families, and on the campuses of India in the 1930s, the bourgeoisie were a very complex and deeply divided phenomena. We were never told about the ideological divide within Mahatma Gandhi’s Congress or even within our own larger family.

My father was an educationist. He set up a chain of state-run schools with local help in a far off Himalayan region after the Indo China war. Did they also have to battle their Brahminical tradition-bound families or the state government? Did they take them on, or did they capitulate on various fronts? Was it worthwhile?

Nationalist discourse

As I watched the repeated suppression of writers, thinkers, intellectuals and, most recently, students, along with the string of lies spewed out by our rulers to justify it, I was reminded of the gap in our understanding of the processes at work in India and was so upset I could hardly speak.

Peace protests, pacifist appeals and a global protest against the suppression of free speech, nothing seemed to work, as our nation entered a long, dark tunnel of fascism with a domestic face – that of lawyers and other right-wing activists, who called themselves proud sons of Bharat Mata, beating up citizens they judged to be traitors.

It was at that point when I began to re-read the literature and popular tracts of the 1920s. That was the period my parents grew up in, and there were two opposing sets of views about the nationalist discourse and cultural identity of the middle classes in India.

On both sides, traditionally embedded and national social values about class, caste and gender fed into each other. So while my mother and her siblings enjoyed their school years in one of the most liberal co-educational campuses in the country under the benign gaze of Tagore, artist Nandalal Bose, Sanskrit scholar Kshiti Mohan Sen and Hindi novelist and historian Hazari Prasad Dwivedi, most girls in their age group were married before they reached puberty to live lives as wives and mothers dependent on men, as laid down by Manu centuries ago.

The perfect woman

In the Hindi belt, the Stri Dharma Prashnottari, a 40-page monograph on women’s duties, published by the Gita Press, Gorakhpur, was a bestseller and did the rounds of middle class families. It recorded a conversation between an ideal woman, Savitri, and her simple acolyte, Sarala, whom she lectured about how to be a good wife, mother and daughter-in-law. Here was a template for an ideal Hindu woman whose morality, purity and chastity were to be the bedrock for the ideal Sanatan Hindu family – deemed the building block of a Hindu rashtra for the Hindu right wing that strongly opposed Gandhi and Ambedkar’s vision of an egalitarian, secular India.

Savitri’s views in the tract were enunciated very clearly – liberal Western education to girls posed a grave threat to the nation and must be opposed. As they matured, women’s strong sexual urges posed a threat to all so girls must be married before attaining puberty so that their sexuality could be contained before it created mayhem. Women only gained importance as mothers of sons – as it was them who would raise obedient and devoted citizens to serve the nation state.

With this template in place, the figure of the traditional Hindu mother goddess was soon invoked. So, in 1936, from Bengal, the land of Durga worshippers, came Anand Math, a novel in Bengali by Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay. The novel laid a solid foundation for the cult of Bharat Mata. In the preface to an English translation in 1992, the translator BK Roy declared that Bankim’s “great achievement for India was that he made patriotism a religion and his writings had become a gospel of India’s struggle for political independence.” He went on to describe how Vande Mataram (I bow to the mother nation), a song sung by a band of revolutionaries in the novel, became the rallying call for nationalists. The translator thanked Bankim profusely for having created a lineage of revolutionaries, who would always be kept alive by Bharat Mata’s militant Hindu nationalist sons and daughters.

The Hindu state

The vision outlined above was evoked on a spectacular scale by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad in 1983 during its Ekatmata Yajna or Sacrifice for National Unity, a month-long yatra that criss-crossed the country. During this yatra, the Hindutva group combined abstract concepts such as gender and religious identity and sought to give them tangible shape by weaving together legends about the Mother Goddess and national heroes, consecrating them through age-old Vedic rituals.

The tapestry thus created became the basis of a Hindu nation state, which in turn was a combination of the European political concept of the nation-state and Veer Savarkar’s 1922 treatise, Essentials of Hindutva, where he set forth his idea of a Hindu nation united by a common Hindu culture.

But invented traditions are not static. They need to be reinvented in specific contexts to produce and challenge newer identities based on class, religion and gender. After the 1950s, justifying Hindu patriarchy’s differentiation of social space into private and public required a new vision of the motherhood of Bharat Mata.

None of the three major Hindu goddesses – Kali, Lakshmi, and Saraswati – are biological mothers. So the state’s apotheosis into a mother goddess required that the image of the mother goddess be trimmed somewhat, and she be presented primarily as a devoted, selfless and spiritually inclined mother of Hindu sons. She inspired her sons to shed the blood of all those who resisted her aura. Her sons would be ready to lay down their lives, if need be, to save her honour and punish infidels – who we are told repeatedly are non-Bharat Mata worshippers, the unpatriotic seditionists who need to be taught a swift lesson by being beaten up and jailed. To inculcate this philosophy, the champions of the cult of Bharat Mata have repeatedly insisted that all citizens – from cinema halls to university campuses – show unequivocal respect for Bharat Mata’s symbols, the national anthem, Vande Mataram and the tricolour.

Bharat Mata temple

A temple to Bharat Mata had come up in in Varanasi in the 1920s, and another came up in the pilgrimage town of Haridwar in the mid-1980s. It was built by Swami Satymitranand Giri, a Vishwa Hindu Parishad leader praised in temple handbooks for having raised substantial funds from the non-resident children of Bharat Mata. The English guidebook – Bharat Mata Mandir, A Candid Appraisal – said Swami’s decision to build the temple arose from a vision. “In all ancient cultures, the Divine mother is the cause off (sic) Creation,” said the booklet. “It is hoped that the visit to this shrine… will inspire devotion and dedication to Mother-Land.”

Six weeks after the area for the temple was consecrated, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad mounted its Ekatmata Yajna, a carefully planned month-long event during which trucks disguised as chariots doubled up as mobile Bharat Mata temples. These trucks transported images of the mother goddess or Bharat Mata with pots of Ganga water all over India for mass rituals of public worship by all her deemed children (read Hindu nationalists). This made Bharat Mata, or the concept of the nation as a militant goddess, a distinct all-India phenomenon. This was also when it became certain that the political arm of the Sangh Parivar – the Bharatiya Janata Party – would use the cult of Bharat Mata to whip up support for a Hindu rashtra and consolidate Hindu votes in its favour, like it did in the ’90s with the yet-to-be built Ram temple in Ayodhya.

The floors above the Bharat Mata shrine in Haridwar house shrines to shoor (military heroes), sants or saints and Satis or pious widows who chose to burn themselves on their husbands’ pyres. A floor dedicated to great spiritual teachers is dominated by statues of the mystic Ramakrishna, and his disciple Vivekanand. There is also a statue of Sri Aurobindo, but none for his spiritual collaborator, Mirra Alfassa, better known as the Mother of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram in Puducherry. The only woman honoured with a statue in the temple complex is Sharada Ma, the wife and disciple of Ramakrishna.

Not the lunatic fringe

The problem is that democracy, like capitalism, is ultimately a numbers game. Today this heady mix of religion and politics has started to generate toxic side effects among the 69% population that did not vote for the Right in the 2014 general elections. This is an unforeseen headache for the Bharatiya Janata Party. In the aftermath of the events at Jawaharlal Nehru University, we saw its hitherto cocky leadership betray a paranoid sense of embattlement, as first intellectuals and then Dalits and students raised their voices against the State. The lesser members of the party immediately delivered hate speeches against the dissidents, calling for war against intellectuals, the Left, all those suspected of being Left sympathisers and those who believe in secularism. As members of the Union cabinet and BJP members of state Assemblies began to articulate a deep hatred for secular principles, gender justice and free speech, it soon became hard to dismiss them as the lunatic fringe.

Something other than a lapse of logic seemed to be at work here. First, Rohith Vemula, a Dalit PhD student from Hyderabad Central University, committed suicide after his university stopped his meagre stipend. His friends said that Vemula had been targeted for raising issues under the banner of the Ambedkar Students Association. A few weeks later, a mob chanting Bharat Mata ki jai thrashed students, teachers and journalists within the Patiala House courts because the mob had decided that they were anti-national, Pakistan (read Muslim) sympathisers. Some TV news channels backed these self-appointed children of Bharat Mata, whipping up the hysteria further with doctored tapes and calls for a state crackdown on those who did not support their theory of nationalism. Damage control failed. Dalit leaders, intellectuals and students refused to buy the argument first articulated by the Bharat Mata temple compendium, and later theatrically articulated by the Union minister for Human Resource Development, Smriti Irani, in Parliament.

But no political power on earth has been able to muffle public dissent forever. It emerges first within homes and hostels, dhabas and office canteens, then spills over in public places till university campuses erupt like volcanoes. Prescribed normality then turns into a myth. At a point like this, the only way to stay calm is to take each day as it comes, and to use what we know from history. Let them all come: the Right, the Left, the Socialists, the Dalit panthers and Tamil tigers, feminists and LGBT activists. Let our histories mix – anything, as long as they do not set about building a wall.

We welcome your comments at letters@scroll.in

Source: scrollin

Revealed: Why Narendra Modi walked out of his marriage with Jashodaben

Sombhai said the marriage was forced on Modi by his parents when he was a teenager in keeping with the old orthodox tradition of fixing marriages between children and that it was never consummated as Modi walked out of the marriage soon after it was solemnised.

Uday Mahurkar
Ahmedabad, April 10, 2014 | UPDATED 16:25 IST

 

 A day after BJP's prime ministerial nominee Narendra Modi declared in his poll affidavit filed in Vadodara that he was a married man and that his wife's name is Jashodaben, his elder brother Sombhai Modi issued a statement here on Thursday to explain that the marriage was forced on a teenaged Narendra.

Sombhai said the marriage was forced on Modi by his parents when he was a teenager in keeping with the old orthodox tradition of fixing marriages between children and that it was never consummated as Modi walked out of the marriage soon after it was solemnised.

Dwelling on the reasons of the Gujarat Chief Minister's act, Sombhai said a young Modi did it in response to an inner call to work for the nation and the society inspired by the teachings of Swami Vivekanand.

In his press statement Sombhai, who runs a home for the old-aged and lives a simple life with his family in Ahmedabad, appealed to the people to see the marriage in the backdrop of these facts.

Modi, who has ruled Gujarat since 2001, has left the field for "spouse" blank in four Assembly polls. Of late, he has also flaunted his single status at rallies, saying that he was single and had no one to be corrupt for.

Modi ended the speculation over his marital status after a long period of silence, perhaps because the Congress had run a smear campaign against him in the last Vidhan Sabha elections and even after that by projecting Jashodaben, a retired teacher living in a north Gujarat village along with her brother, as a spurned wife and a victim of Modi's exploitation.

Modi's declaration of his marital status is aimed at pre-empting such a campaign and also any attempt to drag him to the Election Commission on the issue.

Since 1992, when Gujarati weekly Abhiyan carried for the first time a story on Modi's marriage, Jashodaben and her family have refrained from talking to media, calling it a personal affair, and wishing Modi good luck in his endeavours.

Source: indiatoday

Blogger's comment: Had Modi divorced Jashodaben earlier in his marriage she would have well cherished family life all these years. Now her application for passport was rejected and she was denied information on her security cover. So much for being spouse of PM of India.

Kanhaiya Kumar has shown that the government is only for BJP supporters – and against everyone else

Opinion

With his fierce public rebuke of the prime minister, the JNU student leader has shattered the belief that Narendra Modi is to be held in fear.

Ajaz Ashraf · Today · 09:15 am

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will struggle hard to recover from the deadly punches Jawaharlal Nehru University Students’ Union leader Kanhaiya Kumar threw at him in his fiery speech on the evening of March 3, hours after his release on bail in a sedition case.

No doubt, Modi will continue to remain prime minister for another three years and he may continue to win elections here and there. But what he seems to have lost irreversibly – unless he takes urgent corrective measures – is the authority and prestige he commands because of the post he holds.

Modi stands diminished. This is because Kumar has conveyed to the nation through his speech – beamed live on just about every channel – that Modi has chosen to govern not as prime minister of all citizens, but only of the Sangh Parivar and other Hindutva adherents. That he oversees an extremely partisan administration, brooks no opposition and criticism, and that his government has deliberately triggered an ideological war that his party wishes to win by conjuring up episodes to justify the use of state power. Kumar also trained the spotlight on the many promises Modi made to the electorate, but he seemingly never intended to implement.

Previous attacks

Others, too, have criticised Modi by employing more or less the same tropes Kumar took recourse to in his speech. You can count among them Rahul Gandhi, Nitish Kumar, Lalu Prasad Yadav, Sitaram Yechury, and Arvind Kejriwal, who only a couple of months ago tweeted about the prime minister being a “coward” and a “psychopath”. But they are recognised as electoral rivals of Modi. It is their job, perhaps, even their responsibility, to corner the prime minister. In attacking Modi, they only conform to our expectations.

Kumar does not suffer from what can be called the handicap of expectations. He doesn’t have an election to win, power to grab, a political career to fashion – though his speech of March 3 could well become the beginning of one. He is among the many student leaders on our campuses owing allegiance to the Left or Centrist or Right parties. He has been wronged and maligned. To us, therefore, his speech had the fury of the innocent, who is palpably shocked to discover the workings of the system. This was why his speech sounded to us as our voice, that of the common person.

In contrast to the attacks of seasoned political leaders on Modi, Kumar’s seemed selfless, undertaken at great risk. He isn’t, after all, insulated from the blowback of the state, as most politicians are. Only three weeks ago, he had been arrested and interrogated. He had been thrashed on the court premises. Unmindful of his recent tribulations, Kumar still came out with his guns blazing. To his listeners, he came across as a courageous young man willing to take on the country’s most powerful man.

The courage Kumar displayed challenges an enduring myth about Modi – that he doesn’t forgive his critics, that he is a strongman who evokes fear in those around him. When Modi came to Delhi as prime minister, bureaucrats stopped airing views about their ministries over the phone, fearing it was tapped and somebody would be listening in. There were many juicy, but disturbing, stories about Union ministers cowering before Modi.

David vs Goliath

The belief that Modi is to be feared has been shattered by the many barbs Kumar threw at him, each cheered lustily by the audience surrounding him in JNU. He was mocking Modi’s power as well as daring him. It is possible his government may still retaliate against Kumar, but only at its own peril. It would only reinforce the growing impression that Modi is authoritarian, brought out in Kumar’s reference to Hitler. The student leader said, “Modiji was talking about [Joseph] Stalin and [Nikita] Khrushchev in Parliament. When I heard him speaking I felt like saying...Modiji, please speak about Hitler a little.”

But the perceived authoritarian streak in Modi is not only because of his personality but because of the ideology to which he subscribes. The student leader asked Modi to talk about “Mussolini whose black cap you wear, who [Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh founder, MS] Golwarkar sahib went to meet”. In other words, it is the Hindutva ideology which has Modi, as also the Sangh outfits, embracing an authoritarian style of functioning, being intolerant of differences of opinion.

Scarcely before has a prime minister been rebuked so publicly. It was David taking on Goliath. Kanhaiya’s speech will be seen as a battle between the powerless and the powerful, between the privileged and the common person. Kanhaiya did not let his listeners forget that he belongs to an impoverished family, that JNU has provided him and others of his class an avenue for social mobility, to be educated in the country’s premier educational institute. Modi is the other, the powerful and rich foe. Modi’s chaiwala persona has been denuded of its symbolical meaning.

Sharp polarisation

Obviously, Kumar’s speech will have enraged Sangh Parivar supporters, as it will enthuse their ideological opponents. But this illustrates vividly that the Modi Sarkar has become partisan, commanding the respect and deference of only those who belong to the prime minister’s party and a segment of those who voted for it in the 2014 elections. You will not even have neutral political pundits express dismay at Kanhaiya being disrespectful to the prime minister and diminishing his stature overnight.

They will not do so because Modi isn’t perceived to be just and fair, as is expected of any prime minister. In a democracy, governments do try to execute the agendas of their parties and hope to establish the dominance of their respective ideologies. But this cannot and should not be at the expense of fair play; it cannot and should not lead members of society to win the ideological battle through bloodletting. Modi has forgotten these aspects of governance, choosing to remain silent even as his own party members have tried to light one fire after another through divisive programmes like love jihad, ghar wapsi, cow protection, and the ongoing attempt to crush dissent.

It, therefore, did not come as a surprise that Kumar should have referred to Modi’s tweets and his "Mann ki Baat" radio programme. Over the months, these outlets have come to signify Modi’s refusal to speak on issues agitating the people. These are merely his devices to trumpet his government’s programmes or remember those who constitute the pantheon of Sangh leaders.

Like many others, Kumar too was railing against the prime minister’s style of communication. It is a style which doesn’t establish conversation, refuses to engage critics, and revels in the adulation of his followers. His government has consequently become the government of the Bharatiya Janata Party, by the Bharatiya Janata Party, for Bharatiya Janata Party supporters. All other Indians are rivals who have to be fought – and vanquished through means fair or foul.

Kumar portrayed the government as insensitive and hard-hearted, most tellingly by quoting his mother, who had asked, “Why doesn’t Modi speak of Maa [Mother] ki baat [instead of Mann Ki Baat]?” It speaks of a government indifferent to the anguish of mothers, their silent lament. In our collective consciousness, this is now neatly juxtaposed with the prime minister and his ministers who are forever paying obeisance to Bharat Mata or Mother India.

Lessons to be learnt

In many ways, Kumar has undermined the moral legitimacy of the Modi government. He has shown it to be culpable of triggering debates on spurious issues to divert popular attention from its own failings. As Kumar said, “Do not try to separate the constable, the farmer, the soldier, poor people like me, by creating distorted binaries. I salute the soldiers, but have you ever thought of their families, the families of farmers who are forced to commit suicide?”

The distorted binaries, Kumar suggested, have been created to ensure people do not remember Modi’s elections promises of “sabka saath, sabka vikas” (Together with all, development for all), of bringing back black money from abroad, and depositing Rs 15 lakh in each person’s account. From this perspective, it is not only a government for the BJP supporters, but also against the people.

It is likely that Kumar’s speech will be ignored by Modi with his customary disdain. Or he will continue to perceive the growing criticism against his government as a conspiracy of the Gandhis, the communists, the socialists, the anarchists, et al. He will, as he did in Parliament on March 3, accuse Rahul Gandhi of suffering from an inferiority complex, of being jealous that he isn’t the prime minister. In his speech, Modi also said, “We need to make an atmosphere of improving trust. If you have suggestions, please do so. The government also needs to improve and this will not happen without your support.”

To improve, the prime minister must heed Kumar's words. His is the voice of the people. Five years after the anti-corruption movement, it isn’t Parliament that has stirred the nation, but a common person, a young man from the backwaters of Bihar. Kumar’s rise, ironically, also reflects the declining significance of Parliament in our lives.

We welcome your comments at letters@scroll.in.

Source: scrollin

Blogger Comment: Must read article!!

Make freedom in India

Translated excerpts of the speech by JNUSU president on JNU campus, March 3

Written by Kanhaiya Kumar | Published:March 5, 2016 12:08 am

Kanhaiya Kumar at the JNU campus on March 3, 2015. (Reuters)

We have faith in the Constitution, in this country’s law and the judiciary, and that change is truth. And there will be change, we are standing on the side of change. I have faith in our Constitution. As is written in the preamble, we stand by socialism, secularism and equality.

The first thing is, I don’t want to say anything about proceedings that are sub judice. I only want to say the entire country truly believes in the Constitution and wants to make Babasaheb Ambedkar’s dreams come true.

The PM has tweeted “satyamev jayate”. I may have a lot of ideological differences with you, PMji; but this slogan is not his, it’s in our Constitution. So I, too, will say satyamev jayate. Truth will win. I want to tell all those who are part of this fight that I will share my experience. So don’t believe that sedition has been used as a political tool against students, understand it like this:

I come from a village. In railway stations, there are magicians. The magician shows magic and sells rings, all kinds of rings, and he will tell you the ring will fulfil all your dreams. Similarly, we have some policy pundits in our country who say black money will come back, Har Har Modi, price rise will come down. Indians have a tendency to forget such things quickly but this time, the “jumla” is so big that we can’t forget these phrases. So their idea is that we should forget these “jumlas”. And how will they make us forget? They will stop fellowships to all research scholars. And what will people say? “Please give the fellowship, please give the fellowship.” Then they will say, okay, the fellowship of Rs 5,000 and Rs 8,000 will continue. So the question of raising the fellowship grant will never arise. And who will oppose this? JNU.

So when you get abused, don’t worry. In this country, whoever speaks against this anti-people government, what will its cyber cell department do? Make a doctored video. Abuse you. And count the number of condoms in your dustbin. These are solemn times and we need to seriously understand that the attack on JNU is an organised attack because they want to delegitimise the Occupy UGC movement and also because they want to end the ongoing fight to ensure justice for Rohith Vemula.

I want to tell you one thing: Getting admission to JNU is not easy. So it’s not easy to forget JNU students either. If you try to ensure that we forget things, we’ll remind you again and again. Whenever the political establishment has committed atrocities, JNU has stood up against it. You cannot dilute our fight.

What do they say? On one side, soldiers are dying at the borders. I salute those soldiers. But I have a question. A BJP leader said in Lok Sabha that young men are dying at the borders. I want to ask him, are they your brothers? Or the millions of farmers committing suicide, those who grow wheat for the country and the soldiers, the soldier’s father; what will you say to them? The farmer who works in the fields is my father, the soldier at the border who dies is my brother. So do not try to create a binary and false debate in the country. Who is responsible for deaths of soldiers? And in Parliament, who are you playing politics with? Who will take responsibility for those dying? Not the ones who are fighting, but rather the people making us fight.

So who is responsible for war? And who is responsible for making people fight? How my father is dying and how my brothers die? I want to ask those making these binary arguments on primetime television: Is it wrong to ask for freedom from problems in the country. Is that wrong? They ask, who do we want freedom from? You tell us. Is anyone a slave in India? No. So obviously we are not asking for freedom from India, my brothers, but we are asking for freedom in the country. And there is a clear difference between the two. We are not asking for freedom from the English. That freedom the people of this country fought for, and have already won.

I will now speak of my experiences. The police would take me for food and for medical tests. They’d ask how I survive without talking. So I started talking to them. And it turned out that the policeman was someone like me. In this country, who works in the police? Whose father is a farmer or a labourer or from a weaker section of society? I am also from one of the country’s backward states, Bihar. I also come from a poor family of farmers. And those who work in the police come from such families. I spoke to constables, head constables and inspectors; I did not interact much with IPS officers.

So I spoke to the policemen. They asked me, why do you say “lal salaam”? So I told them, lal means revolution, and salaam is to salute the revolution. So he said, “I do not understand.” And I asked, “Inquilab zindabad?” He said he knew this. So I said revolution in Urdu is inquilab. And he said even the ABVP raises this slogan. Now he understood. Theirs is a fake slogan and ours is real. Please tell me this, the policeman asked, “You people get everything cheap in JNU?” So I asked him why this has not happened with him. He works for 18 hours a day and without overtime. So I asked where he gets the money from? What they call corruption.

They get Rs 110 for their uniform. For this much, you cannot even buy undergarments. The policeman said this. And I told him, this is what we want freedom from. From hunger, from corruption. By this time, the agitation in Haryana had begun. A lot of personnel in Delhi Police come from Haryana. I salute people from Haryana, they work very hard. He said this caste politics is very bad. So I replied that this is what we want freedom from. So he said there is nothing wrong or seditious with this. I asked him who has the most power in the system. He said his baton. I asked if he could use the baton on his own. He said no. So who has all the power? He said the man who makes statements on fake tweets. I told him we wanted freedom from such Sanghi people who make statements on false tweets.

The policeman, like me, is from a common family. He also wanted to do a PhD. But he did not get a JNU. Like me, he wanted to fight the system. He wanted to understand the difference between sakshar and shikshit. But he is now in the police. That’s why you want to stamp us down. Because you don’t want a poor man to do a PhD. Because education being sold is expensive and he will not have the money to pursue it. You want to drown out those voices who can unite. Whether they are on the border or dying in the fields or are asking for freedom in JNU.

Babasaheb had said political democracy alone would not work, we will work towards social democracy. That’s why we speak of the Constitution. Lenin said democracy is indispensable to socialism. That’s why we speak of democracy, freedom of expression, equality and socialism. Because a peon’s son and the son of the president can study in the same school. You want to drown such voices.

Translated by Apurva and Seema Chishti

Source: indianexpress

You are not defending the flag when you frighten your own people into silence: Rahul Gandhi in Lok Sabha

Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi targeted the government on a range of issues — from JNU to Rohith Vemula, black money to foreign policy. Excerpts from his speech in Lok Sabha:

By: Express News Service | New Delhi | Updated: March 3, 2016 1:09 pm

Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi at Parliament house in new delhi on wednesday (Express photo)

On black money

The Finance Minister announced a fair and lovely scheme, saying it was Modiji’s scheme which would convert black money into white. In 2014, Modi had said I will finish black money… I will jail anybody who has black money. But under the fair and lovely scheme, nobody will go to jail, nobody will be arrested, nobody will be asked anything. Go to Arun Jaitleyji, pay tax and turn black money into white.

On economy

Modiji had promised to bring down prices. Dal was Rs 70. And he had promised to bring it down. Today, it is Rs 200. Earlier, crude oil was 130 dollars per barrel. Today it is 35 dollars per barrel. Not even a single rupee is being passed on to the common man.

Watch: Rahul Gandhi attacks Modi in Lok Sabha



On jobs

Modiji had promised 2 crore jobs every year. The Make in India logo babbar sher is visible everywhere. But nobody knows how many jobs have been given. The PM has been criticising MGNREGA, saying he was continuing with the scheme to expose the UPA’s mistake. Arun Jaitley came to me and told me there is no better scheme than MRNREGA. I said, go and tell your boss. Then he did not have anything say. He was silent. I know there is fear. Narendra Modiji is a very powerful person. I know you people are also afraid. But you should all speak up before him.

On Rohith Vemula

Rohith asked was he being harassed because he was a Dalit? Shouldn’t a poor Dalit like me have a future in Hindustan? What does the powerful Government of India do? You crush him and he commits suicide. Your ministers raise questions on whether he was a Dalit.

On JNU

Kanhaiya delivered a 20-minute speech. I have heard it. He did not utter a word against India. You arrested him. If anybody has said anything unlawful, you arrest him, take action. But you have let them go scot-free while you arrest Kanhaiya. Sixty per cent of the students in JNU are Dalits and from backward, minority and OBC communities. Why are you after JNU and Rohith…. neither will you be able to crush JNU nor the poor of this country. Which religion talks of beating teachers and students and media in court? Mr Prime Minister, why haven’t you uttered a single word?

On Tricolour

Respecting the flag means respecting the opinion of every Indian. When I went to JNU, your ABVP workers waved black flags in my face. They taunted me, they abused me. I did not get angry. In fact, I felt proud that I still live in a country, in India where it is possible to be confronted by people who held a different opinion than my own. I don’t agree with their views; I protected our Indian flag when I led people, when they waved those black flags at my face… You cannot defend the Indian flag by destroying the relationships between our people. You are not defending the flag when you frighten your own people into silence.

On PM and BJP-RSS
Whose opinion does the Prime Minister listen to? Does he respect your opinion? Does he respect the opinion of his ministers? You were in silence. I understand. I understand the feeling within you and I want to bring that out; I want you to make him listen. But anyway, that will happen slowly. You have been taught by your teachers in the RSS that there is only one truth in the universe — your own — that nobody else’s opinion matters in the entire universe. This is all you have shown us in the last two years. The Prime Minister cannot run the country on only his opinion. The country is not the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister is not the country.

On Mumbai terror attack

Pakistan directly attacked this country in Mumbai on 26/11… The operation to stop the terrorists was on. Our soldiers and citizens were dying. The Government of India begged the Chief Minister of Gujarat not to go to Mumbai. The then Chief Minister of Gujarat decided to go to Mumbai. Did he care? No; he went right ahead to Mumbai, to the Oberoi Hotel itself and disturbed the entire operation. He grabbed his headlines while our people died.

On Pakistan

Mumbai was a horrible, terrible blow to this country… The UPA government worked tirelessly to trap Pakistan. We isolated them internationally. We spent thousands of hours of diplomacy to turn them into a pariah nation. We destroyed their reputation internationally and put them into a little diplomatic cage… What does the Prime Minister do? He decides to have a cup of tea with Nawaz Sharif… Without any thought, without any vision, he decides to take a detour to Pakistan and have a chai pe charcha. The Prime Minister, single-handedly, destroyed six years of our work. In one move, he personally let Pakistan out of the little cage into which we had put them. He gifted them a status equal to our own.

On PM’s style of functioning

There have been others in history who could only see their own perspective, people who saluted the cloth but destroyed the relationship and conversation between their people. Milosevic, the President of Yugoslavia, used to salute the flag every morning and talk of patriotism all day long. He broke the relationship between Serbs and Croats and destroyed his country. Nearer to us, Yahya Khan claimed to defend the Pakistani flag. As a soldier, he used to salute their flag every morning… and refused to listen to his countrymen. He destroyed the relationship between Punjabi and Bengali and he tore his country into two. The Prime Minister still has the option to listen to what the country is trying to tell him. The country is gently trying to give him a message. The Prime Minister just has to listen to the message, listen to those around you, listen to Rajnath Singhji, listen to Advaniji, listen to Sushma Swarajji, listen to your MPs, listen to us across the aisle here — we are not your enemies, we do not hate you — listen to the voice of the Indian people, listen to the farmers and workers who have so much wisdom and, especially, listen to the voice of the next generation. They are the future of this country. Allow them the dignity of their voice.

Source: indianexpress

The Urdu Press: Decoding patriotism

Hasan Kamal, in his column in Inquilab on the same day, writes: “After the incidents at Dadri, and now at JNU, the world has once again started looking at the secular status of India with doubt and misgiving."

Written by Seema Chishti | Published:March 4, 2016 12:20 am

Hasan Kamal, in his column in Inquilab on the same day, writes: “Today, spokespersons of the BJP swear by the Constitution and consider an insult to it as an anti-national act. (Express Photo by Praveen Khanna)

Recent happenings in some institutions, particularly in JNU, have raised questions on certain basic concepts about the nation-state. Rashtriya Sahara, in an editorial called “What is Real Patriotism!” on February 29, writes: “As far as patriotism is concerned, it is the duty of every Indian [to be a patriot]. It should also be understood that patriotism is not the sole preserve of any particular party or group with certain ideological views and nobody has the right to say that anybody not of a particular viewpoint is
not a patriot…”

Hasan Kamal, in his column in Inquilab on the same day, writes: “After the incidents at Dadri, and now at JNU, the world has once again started looking at the secular status of India with doubt and misgiving. Some 93 professors and intellectuals from different parts of the world, including… Noam Chomsky and Nobel laureate… Orhan Pamuk, protested against the arrest of the JNUSU president, Kanhaiya Kumar, and compared the JNU incidents with the Emergency of 1975… Today, spokespersons of the BJP swear by the Constitution and consider an insult to it as an anti-national act.

They have not only accepted Parkash Singh Badal as the CM of Punjab, they also defend his party, the Akali Dal, which had burnt the Constitution publicly in 1984. Today, this government suddenly and mysteriously signs an accord with Naga leaders that is described as a shining example of political strategy. These Naga leaders were espousing the cause of an armed struggle for an independent Nagaland… In J&K, the BJP formed a coalition government with the PDP that considers Afzal Guru a martyr… This is not patriotism, this is plain enmity against the country.”

Conspiracy Theories: Etemaad, belonging to the AIMIM, in its editorial on February 23, writes: “PM Narendra Modi has expressed apprehension that conspiracies are being hatched to destabilise his government… The Opposition has never tried to destabilise the Modi government and snatch power. But it’s true that the Opposition would never support a government that doesn’t pay heed to its demands. That’s why many bills in Parliament are not being converted into acts… The PM doesn’t respond to many vital issues and lets other leaders deal with these. This is like the role of an emperor and there is no place for an emperor in a democracy.”

Shakeel Shamsi, editor of Inquilab, writes on the same day: “Who are these powerful NGOs who are creating difficulty for a powerful person like Modi? …[One] realises that it’s not any NGO but his own party members, or members of the Sangh Parivar, who are trying to uproot his government with controversial and provocative statements. Why is Modi not able to identify them?”

Jat Valour: Siasat, in its editorial on February 21, writes: “The government takes a tough line while grappling with any matter. But by bowing swiftly before the agitation of Jats, it has proved that the Modi-led Central government understands only the language of force. If the party using its power against university students in Delhi has been weakened in Haryana, it is a delicate (naazuk) change. The Jat biradari constitutes a very small percentage of the country’s population. But it forced the government to bend and agree… One should applaud the Jat biradari’s valour and courage as… it made the government bite the dust and quickly agree.”

The Jamaat-e-Islami’s Daawat, in a commentary on February 25, writes: “Jat reservation is not easy. How can a state with 49.5 per cent reservations now accord reservation to Jats with the Supreme Court cap of 50 per cent? … Now other castes may also take to the street with demands of reservations.”

Jadeed Khabar, in its editorial on February 22, writes: “One section of the people is being kept under fear and the government is getting afraid of another section… Muslims are also considered among the most deserving for reservations. But whenever the issue is brought up, all sorts of excuses are given.”

Compiled by Seema Chishti

Source: indianexpress

Hasan Kamal, in his column in Inquilab on the same day, writes: “After the incidents at Dadri, and now at JNU, the world has once again started looking at the secular status of India with doubt and misgiving. Some 93 professors and intellectuals from different parts of the world, including… Noam Chomsky and Nobel laureate… Orhan Pamuk, protested against the arrest of the JNUSU president, Kanhaiya Kumar, and compared the JNU incidents with the Emergency of 1975… Today, spokespersons of the BJP swear by the Constitution and consider an insult to it as an anti-national act. - See more at: http://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/jnu-row-kanhaiya-kumar-jat-quota-stir-the-urdu-press-decoding-patriotism-freedom-speech-democracy/#sthash.j16YMHLE.dpuf

Hasan Kamal, in his column in Inquilab on the same day, writes: “After the incidents at Dadri, and now at JNU, the world has once again started looking at the secular status of India with doubt and misgiving. Some 93 professors and intellectuals from different parts of the world, including… Noam Chomsky and Nobel laureate… Orhan Pamuk, protested against the arrest of the JNUSU president, Kanhaiya Kumar, and compared the JNU incidents with the Emergency of 1975… Today, spokespersons of the BJP swear by the Constitution and consider an insult to it as an anti-national act. - See more at: http://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/jnu-row-kanhaiya-kumar-jat-quota-stir-the-urdu-press-decoding-patriotism-freedom-speech-democracy/#sthash.j16YMHLE.dpuf

Hasan Kamal, in his column in Inquilab on the same day, writes: “After the incidents at Dadri, and now at JNU, the world has once again started looking at the secular status of India with doubt and misgiving. Some 93 professors and intellectuals from different parts of the world, including… Noam Chomsky and Nobel laureate… Orhan Pamuk, protested against the arrest of the JNUSU president, Kanhaiya Kumar, and compared the JNU incidents with the Emergency of 1975… Today, spokespersons of the BJP swear by the Constitution and consider an insult to it as an anti-national act. - See more at: http://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/jnu-row-kanhaiya-kumar-jat-quota-stir-the-urdu-press-decoding-patriotism-freedom-speech-democracy/#sthash.j16YMHLE.dpuf

Hasan Kamal, in his column in Inquilab on the same day, writes: “After the incidents at Dadri, and now at JNU, the world has once again started looking at the secular status of India with doubt and misgiving. Some 93 professors and intellectuals from different parts of the world, including… Noam Chomsky and Nobel laureate… Orhan Pamuk, protested against the arrest of the JNUSU president, Kanhaiya Kumar, and compared the JNU incidents with the Emergency of 1975… Today, spokespersons of the BJP swear by the Constitution and consider an insult to it as an anti-national act. - See more at: http://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/jnu-row-kanhaiya-kumar-jat-quota-stir-the-urdu-press-decoding-patriotism-freedom-speech-democracy/#sthash.j16YMHLE.dpuf